Evonetix raises £9m for novel gene synthesis tech

Cambridge, UK-based Evonetix has raised £9 million to help fuel the advance of its technology designed to enable scalable and high-fidelity gene synthesis.

The firm was set up in 2016 to develop technology that enables the parallel synthesis of DNA on silicon arrays, to facilitate the fast-emerging field of synthetic biology, widely expected be the next frontier in life sciences.

Synthetic biology “provides the opportunity to fundamentally change the way in which our planet’s resources are managed, but this brings a requirement for very large amounts of DNA synthesised with high accuracy,” said Cambridge-based scientist and entrepreneur Hermann Hauser.

“Evonetix is developing a solution to this problem through its highly parallel and high-fidelity approach to synthesis.”

The company says its platform uses “an addressable silicon array to direct the synthesis of DNA at many sites in parallel, followed by an error-detection process to allow the assembly of high-fidelity DNA at scale”.

“This is the superpower that could transform the world of synthetic biology and allow us to engineer next-generation medicines and better versions of products we use every day,” he added.

“We are excited to back a team and technology that can materially reduce costs and improve innovation in our own portfolio companies and multiple global industries,” said Matt Ocko, Managing Partner of DCVC, explaining the rationale behind his firm’s investment in technology.